Machine readable security mark and process for generating same

ABSTRACT

A print device prints a document with a security marking in a microtext font. A scanning device scans the security marking, and an optical character recognition (OCR) engine attempts to recognize the characters in the security marking. The system the generates an encoding in which each character of the font is mapped to a character string made up only of characters that the OCR engine could recognize at or above a minimum recognition threshold. Then, when generating a new document with a new security marking in the microtext font, the system will use the encoding to replace each character in the security marking with its representation from the encoding so that the scanner and OCR engine can decode the security marking.

BACKGROUND

Security is an important requirement in many document printingapplications. In situations such as official or government documentprinting, event ticket printing, financial instrument printing and thelike, many printed documents must be protected against copying, forgingand/or counterfeiting.

In some situations, document creators may wish to encode a security markin a document in a way that is invisible to the human eye, but which canbe detected by optical character recognition (OCR) systems. However,existing methods of encoding security marks onto printed documentsexhibit various technical limitations. Invisible inks can be used, butthey are expensive to apply and can degrade over time. In addition, thetechnical capabilities of various OCR systems can vary, so not allprinted security marks can be read by various OCR systems.

This document describes methods and systems for creating and using adocument with a security mark that addresses at least some of theproblems described above, and/or other problems.

SUMMARY

In various aspects, in a method of generating an encoding for printingsecure information on a document, a print device prints on a securitymark on a substrate. The security mark includes various characters in amicrotext font. Each of the characters appears more than one time in thesecurity mark. A scanning device scans the security mark to create adigital image. An image processing server implements an opticalcharacter recognition (OCR) engine by: (i) applying an OCR process tothe digital image to attempt to recognize the characters in the securitymark; (ii) identifying which of the characters in the security mark arerecognized via the OCR process at least a number of times that exceeds arecognition threshold, and (iii) allocating the characters that arerecognized via the OCR process at least a threshold number of times to acharacter subset for an encoding. A processing device, which may be anelement of the image processing server, the print device, the scandevice, or a different device, executes programming instructions togenerate an encoding by: (i) determining how many characters are in thecharacter subset; (ii) determining how many font characters are requiredto print the microtext font; (iii) generating an encoding comprising arepresentation of each of the font characters by an encoded characterstring that consists of one or more of the characters that are in thecharacter subset; and (iv) saving the encoding to a memory device.

Optionally, the image processing server may scale the digital image upto a resolution of the OCR engine before applying the OCR process to thedigital image.

After the encoding is generated, then upon receipt of a command to printa new microtext security mark on a new document, a processor in thesystem may identify each character that is to be printed in the newmicrotext security mark. For each identified character that is to beprinted, the processor may map the identified character to an encodedcharacter string in the encoding that represents the identifiedcharacter. A print device, which may be the device that printed theoriginal document or a different print device, will print the newdocument with each identified character in the new microtext securitymark replaced by its encoded character string.

Optionally, the scanning device may scan a new microtext security markthat is printed on a new document. The image processing server mayreceive an indication that the new microtext security mark correspondsto the encoding, and it may use the OCR engine to identify the encodedcharacter strings from the encoding that are in the new microtextsecurity mark. The image processing server will also access the encodingand convert each of the identified encoded character strings in the newmicrotext security mark to a corresponding font character as representedin the encoding. The image processing server will save, to a memory, adocument file in which the identified encoded character strings in thenew microtext security mark are replaced with their corresponding fontcharacters. In addition, a print device may print, or a display devicemay display, a document comprising the new microtext security mark withcorresponding font characters that were identified in the convertingstep.

Optionally, the font may include a 256-character ASCII font. Each of theencoded character strings may include a string of 4 characters, a stringof 8 characters, a string of 16 characters, or a different number ofcharacters.

Optionally, the recognition threshold may include a percentage that hasa value of at least 50%. Optionally, the recognition threshold mayinclude a requirement that a character be recognized at a level that isgreater than that of other characters.

In another aspect, a system includes an image processing server. Thesystem also includes a computer-readable medium containing programminginstructions that are configured to cause the image processing server,by itself and/or with other system elements such as a print device andscanning device, to implement methods such as those described above.

In another aspect, a computer-readable medium contains programminginstructions that are configured to cause a processing device, by itselfand/or with other system elements such as a print device and scanningdevice, to implement methods such as those described above.

In another aspect, a system or non-transitory computer-readable mediummay contain programming instructions to use an encoding to decode secureinformation that is printed on a document. The instructions may beconfigured to cause an image processing server to receive, from ascanning device, a digital scanned image of a security mark that isprinted on a substrate comprising a plurality of characters in amicrotext font. Each of the characters printed in the security mark maybe part of an encoded character string that represents a full characterset of the microtext font. Each of characters included in the securitymark may be part of a character subset that was extracted from the fullcharacter set. The system may receive an indication that the newmicrotext security mark corresponds to the encoding. The system mayapply an OCR process to identify the encoded character strings that arein the microtext security mark> The system may access a memory devicecontaining the encoding, and it may map each of the identified encodedcharacter strings in the microtext security mark to a corresponding fontcharacter of the full character set as represented in the encoding. Thesystem may then convert each of the identified encoded character stringsin the microtext security mark to its corresponding font character ofthe full character set, and it may save a document file in which theidentified encoded character strings in the microtext security mark havebeen replaced with their corresponding font characters from the fullcharacter set.

Optionally, in this aspect the system also may cause a print device toprint a document comprising the microtext security mark withcorresponding font characters of the full character set that wereidentified in the converting step.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a printed image into which microtexthas been encoded to provide a security mark.

FIG. 2 illustrates a system for generating and decoding documentscontaining microtext security marks.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart that illustrates a process that can be used togenerate an encoding for use in creating documents containing microtextsecurity marks.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart that illustrates a process of using an encoding togenerate a new document containing a new microtext security mark, aswell as decoding the microtext security mark.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing various equipment that may be used toimplement various embodiments of the processes described in thisdocument.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

This disclosure is not limited to the particular systems, methodologiesor protocols described, as these may vary. The terminology used in thisdescription is for the purpose of describing the particular versions orembodiments only, and is not intended to limit the scope.

As used in this document, any word in singular form, along with thesingular forms “a,” “an” and “the,” include the plural reference unlessthe context clearly dictates otherwise. Unless defined otherwise, alltechnical and scientific terms used herein have the same meanings ascommonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. Allpublications mentioned in this document are incorporated by reference.Nothing in this document is to be construed as an admission that theembodiments described in this document are not entitled to antedate suchdisclosure by virtue of prior invention. As used in this document, theterm “comprising” means “including, but not limited to.”

In this disclosure, the term “document” refers to a print media ontowhich content has been printed. The content may be printed on the printmedia substrate using toner and/or ink. The document may, for example,include one or more areas comprising characters, and/or one or moreother areas consisting of images.

The term “electronic device” refers to a device having a processor and anon-transitory, computer-readable medium (i.e., memory). The memory maycontain programming instructions in the form of a software applicationthat, when executed by the processor, causes the device to perform oneor more processing operations according to the programming instructions.An electronic device also may include additional components such as atouch-sensitive display device that serves as a user interface, as wellas a camera or other image capturing device. An electronic device alsomay include one or more communication hardware components such as atransmitter and/or receiver that will enable the device to send and/orreceive signals to and/or from other devices, whether via acommunications network or via near-field or short-range communicationprotocols.

In this document the term “encoding” refers to a set of rules torepresent characters of a particular font as microtext using a limitedset of characters.

The terms “memory,” “memory device,” “computer-readable medium” and“data store” each refer to a non-transitory device on whichcomputer-readable data, programming instructions or both are stored.Unless the context specifically states that a single device is requiredor that multiple devices are required, the terms “memory,” “memorydevice” “computer-readable medium” and “data store” include both thesingular and plural embodiments, as well as portions of such devicessuch as memory sectors.

The term “microtext” refers to a printed character set of a size that isso small that the individual characters are not typically discernable bythe human eye. Microtext will have a maximum size threshold such as 1point, 1/100th of an inch or the like. An example is 0.84 point font.Additional fonts ranging from 0.72 point font to 1.08 point font may beconsidered microtext, along with similarly small sizes. As anotherexample, microtext may have a size corresponding to a maximum of 600line pairs per degree. Systems that use non-English characters, such asChinese, Japanese, Hebrew or Arabic, may have larger minimum sizes.

A “print device” or “print engine” is a device that is configured toprint a document based on digital data, or a multi-functional device inwhich one of the functions is printing based on digital data. Examplecomponents of a print device include a print head, which may includecomponents such as a print cartridge containing ink, toner or anotherprint material, as well as a document feeding system configured to passa substrate through the print device so that the print head can printcharacters and/or images on the substrate.

A “processor” or “processing device” is a hardware component of anelectronic device that is configured to execute programminginstructions. The term “processor” may refer to either a singleprocessor or to multiple processors that together implement varioussteps of a process. Unless the context specifically states that a singleprocessor is required or that multiple processors are required, the term“processor” includes both the singular and plural embodiments.

Microtext may be used in security printing to mitigate against copying,forging and counterfeiting of documents, because most typical scanningand copying devices do not operate at a resolution that is sufficient tocopy all characters of the microtext. FIG. 1 shows this by way ofexample. In FIG. 1, an image 101 is printed, and in the image certaincontent is printed using microtext. The individual characters of themicrotext cannot be seen without magnification and thus appear as solidlines in the image 101. However, when a segment 102 of the image ismagnified, one can see that the solid lines are actually made up ofindividual characters that can make up a sequence such as words.

If the image 101 were not the original but rather were a photocopy or ascanned version of the document created with a typical, commonly-usedcopying or scanning device, then when the segment 102 is magnified someor all of the individual characters would not be discernable. Instead,some or all of the microtext characters would be blurry and/or altered,and some or all portions of the solid line may remain solid even undermagnification.

FIG. 2 illustrates a system that may be used to generate a secureprinted document. In FIG. 2, a print device 201 receives a command toprint a document 202 that contains a security mark that includesmicrotext. The printed document 202 may include graphics and/orcharacters, and the microtext will form one or more portions of one ormore lines of the image, such as is shown by way of example in FIG. 1.The print device 201 may receive this command from a communicativelyconnected computing device or memory storage device. Alternatively, theprint device may receive this command from a remote electronic devicethat is in wireless and/or wired communication with the print device 201via one or more communication networks 205.

The print device 201 will print a document 202 that includes the imageon a substrate. A scanning device will then scan the image to create adigital image that is a data file with data representing the image indigital format. The scanning device may be a multifunction device 203that includes a scanner, a stand-alone scanner, an electronic device 204that includes a camera, or any other device that includes an imagesensor and a processor that executes programming instructions that causethe image sensor to digitally capture an image of the document. Thescanning device (203 or 204) may be a component of the same device orsystem that includes the print device 201 that printed the document, orit may be a separate scanning device.

Once the scanning device 203/204 has captured the digital image, animage processing server 206 will perform certain actions to process thedigital image, as will be described below in more detail in the contextof FIG. 3. The image processing server 206 will include a processingdevice and a memory device on which image processing programminginstructions are stored. The image processing server 206 may include asingle device or a collection of distributed devices. One or morecomponents of the image processing server 206 may be part of thescanning device 203/204, and/or one or more components of the imageprocessing server 206 may be communicatively connected to the scanningdevice 203/204 via one or more communications networks 205.

The image processing server 206 will generate an encoding that can thenbe used to print additional secure printed documents. The charactersincluded in the encoding will be limited to those that the scanningdevice was able to recognize at least a threshold number of times, aswill be described in more detail below. The encoding will therefore be adevice-relevant encoding because it helps to ensure that microtextprinted in future documents will be discernable by the image sensor andimage processing instructions implemented by the applicable scanningdevice 203/204. The image processing server 206 will provide thisencoding to the print device 201, to a different print device, or toanother electronic device that generates document printing instructionsso that the microtext in future printed documents will be discernable bythe image sensor and image processing instructions implemented by theapplicable scanning device 203/204.

FIG. 3 provides additional detail about the process that a system suchas that of FIG. 2 may implement. As noted above, a print device willreceive a command. In response to the command, the print device willprint a document with an image (graphics and/or characters) thatcontains a security mark that includes microtext (step 301). Themicrotext will be a set of characters, and each of the characters willbe printed more than one time in the security mark. The characters willcorrespond to a particular font, such as for example a 256-characterASCII font. The print device may receive this command from acommunicatively connected local or remote computing device or memorystorage device. To the extent that space on the document allows, eachmicrotext character may be printed on the document at least 10 times, atleast 20 times, at least 50 times, at least 100 times, or any number oftimes so that the characters will appear more than a nominal number oftimes in the document.

A scanning device will then scan the document (or at least a portion ofthe image in the document that contains the security mark) to create adigital image that is a data file with data representing the image indigital format (step 302). Once the scanning device has captured thedigital image, the image processing server (abbreviated as IPS in FIG.3) will perform certain actions to process the digital image, includingimplementing an optical character recognition (OCR) engine to attempt toextract (i.e., recognize and identify) the microtext characters in thedigital image (step 304). The OCR engine will include programminginstructions that are configured to cause the image processing server toperform any suitable now or hereafter known OCR process.

Optionally, to help improve accuracy of the OCR engine, beforeattempting to recognize the microtext characters the scanning deviceand/or the image processing server may pre-process the digital image(step 303). For example, the system may scale up the digital image sothat the individual microtext characters are of a size that is least aslarge as the rated recognition capability (i.e., a selected resolution)of the OCR engine. For example, if the OCR engine is typically capableof recognizing characters that are of a size corresponding to a 10-pointfont and the microtext consists of a 1-point font, the system mayupscale the digital image by 10 x or higher. Other pre-processing stepsmay include de-skewing, de-speckling and/or (if the image is notblack-and-white) binarization. Other pre-processing steps may be used.

After the system attempts to recognize the microtext characters in thedigital image (step 304), the image processing server will identifywhich of the characters were recognized at least a threshold number oftimes (step 305). The threshold may be any suitable threshold indicatingthat a system using the same scanning device and OCR instructions willlikely to be able to recognize those characters again in future secureprinted documents. Possible threshold values may include, for example,98%, 95%, 90%, 80%, 75% any value that is greater than 50%, or anothersuitable value. Other thresholds may be a value that is the highest ofall values in the set of recognized characters, or it may be arequirement that the value be the highest value and at least a setpercentage higher than the next greatest value or more than thecharacter is mis-recognized. Other thresholds may be used. Thus, thethreshold may be a numeric threshold, a criterion, or a combination ofthe two.

When determining which characters have a recognition level that is at orabove the threshold, the system may consider a character to be anindividual character (such as A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, and the like).Alternatively, the system may use optical word recognition to recognizeparticular strings of individual characters that make up one or morewords, a hexadecimal number, or another particular character sequence.

Once the system identifies which characters have a recognition levelthat is at or above the threshold (step 305), the system will allocatethose characters to a character subset (step 306) that will be used togenerate an encoding which as noted above is a set of rules to representcharacters of the particular font that is used in the microtext as setsof character strings using a limited set of characters. The characterstrings may be, for example, strings of 4 characters each, 8 characterseach, 16 characters each, or any other number of characters.

A processing device will then use the characters of the subset togenerate the encoding 307 by determining how many characters are in thecharacter subset, determining how many characters font characters arerequired to print a particular font, and generate the encoding as arepresentation of each of the font characters by an encoded characterstring that consists only of characters that are in the charactersubset. The processing device that generates the encoding may be acomponent of the image processing server or it may be a separateprocessing device. The processing device will then save the encoding toa memory device (step 308) so that the encoding may be used to generatefuture documents that will be scanned and processed by the scanningdevice and OCR engine.

An example result of the OCR engine is shown in the two lines reproducedbelow:

N H-N M N H H N H N N N N M N M M M N M N N N H M M N N N H M M H M NN˜N p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p pp p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p

In these two lines, the first line of the scanned document was a row ofmicrotext in which each character was an “N.” The second line of thescanned document was a row of microtext in which each character was a“p”. The result above shows that the OCR engine mis-identified severalof the characters in the first line as “M” or “H” (or didn't identifythe character at all) more often that it correctly identified thecharacters as “N”. The result shows that the OCR engine correctlyidentified the character “P” each time in the second line, even thoughsome of the characters may have been identified in italic or boldformat. Thus, the encoding for this font will not use the letter N butinstead will represent the letter N with a string of one or morecharacters that are recognizable by the OCR engine, such as a stringthat includes p's and other recognizable characters. The encoding mayrepresent the letter p as itself, or by another recognizable characterstring according to a schema of the encoding. By way of example, if theencoding uses a schema in which: (i) each character string includes 4characters; (ii) the letters p and L are recognizable characters, and(iii) the letter N is not a recognizable character, then the encodingmay represent the letter p as pppp and the letter N as pLpL.

Referring to FIG. 4, after the encoding is saved, the print device, or adifferent computing device that has access to the encoding, may receivea command to generate a new document with a microtext security mark(step 401). The command may be a document file and/or a rule set. Thecommand may include instructions to print the microtext in the specifiedfont for recognition by the scanning device and OICR engine, or theprint device may implement those instructions as received from aseparate device or as retrieved from internal storage.

The system will then use the encoding to generate the new document. Togenerate the new document, the system may identify each character thatis to be printed in the new microtext security mark (step 402). For eachidentified character that is to be printed, the system may map theidentified character to the encoded character string that represents theidentified character in the encoding (step 403). The system may revisethe instructions to modify the microtext security mark so that eachcharacter in the microtext security mark is replaced by itscorresponding encoded character string from the encoding (step 404). Aprint device will then print the new document with the modifiedmicrotext security mark in which each character in the set of text ofthe original microtext security mark is replaced by its correspondingencoded character string from the encoding (step 405).

After the new document is printed, the scanning device and imageprocessing engine may decode the microtext security mark. To do this,then scanning device will scan the document, or at least a portion of itthat contains the modified microtext security mark (step 406). Thesystem may receive an indication that the modified microtext securitymark includes a group of encoded character strings from the encoding(step 407). The system may receive this indication by a command orparameter setting that is provided with the document. Or, the scanner orOCR engine may recognize this, such as by recognizing a known symbolprinted on the document, or by recognizing the modified microtextsecurity mark itself. When this happens, the system may apply use theencoding to decode the modified microtext security mark (step 408). Todo this, the system may apply the OCR engine to the modified microtextsecurity mark to identify the encoded character strings in the modifiedmicrotext security mark, and the system may map the encoded characterstrings to their corresponding font characters of the full fontcharacter set by accessing the encoding and converting each of theencoded character strings to its corresponding font character asrepresented in the encoding. The system may save, to a memory, a newdocument file in which the character strings in the modified microtextsecurity mark are replaced with their corresponding font characters fromthe full character set as represented in the encoding (step 409). Thesystem may then use the new document file to cause a print device toprint, or a display device to display a new document with the decodedmicrotext security mark (step 410).

FIG. 5 depicts an example of internal hardware that may be included inany of the electronic components of the system, such as the user'ssmartphone or a local or remote computing device in the system. Anelectrical bus 500 serves as an information highway interconnecting theother illustrated components of the hardware. Processor 505 is a centralprocessing device of the system, configured to perform calculations andlogic operations required to execute programming instructions. As usedin this document and in the claims, the terms “processor” and“processing device” may refer to a single processor or any number ofprocessors in a set of processors that collectively perform a set ofoperations, such as a central processing unit (CPU), a graphicsprocessing unit (GPU), a remote server, or a combination of these. Readonly memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM), flash memory, hard drivesand other devices capable of storing electronic data constitute examplesof memory devices 525. A memory device may include a single device or acollection of devices across which data and/or instructions are stored.Various embodiments of the invention may include a computer-readablemedium containing programming instructions that are configured to causeone or more processors, print devices and/or scanning devices to performthe functions described in the context of the previous figures.

An optional display interface 530 may permit information from the bus500 to be displayed on a display device 535 in visual, graphic oralphanumeric format. An audio interface and audio output (such as aspeaker) also may be provided. Communication with external devices mayoccur using various communication devices 540 such as a wirelessantenna, an RFID tag and/or short-range or near-field communicationtransceiver, each of which may optionally communicatively connect withother components of the device via one or more communication system. Thecommunication device(s) 540 may be configured to be communicativelyconnected to a communications network, such as the Internet, a localarea network or a cellular telephone data network.

The hardware may also include a user interface sensor 545 that allowsfor receipt of data from input devices 550 such as a keyboard, a mouse,a joystick, a touchscreen, a touch pad, a remote control, a pointingdevice and/or microphone. Digital image frames also may be received froma camera 520 that can capture video and/or still images.

The features and functions disclosed above, as well as alternatives, maybe combined into many other different systems or applications. Variouspresently unforeseen or unanticipated alternatives, modifications,variations or improvements may be made by those skilled in the art, eachof which is also intended to be encompassed by the disclosedembodiments.

The invention claimed is:
 1. A method of generating an encoding forprinting secure information on a document, the method comprising: by aprint device, printing on a substrate a security mark comprising aplurality of characters in a microtext font, wherein each of theplurality of characters appears more than one time in the security mark;by a scanning device, scanning the security mark to create a digitalimage that includes the security mark; by an image processing server,executing programming instructions to implement an optical characterrecognition (OCR) engine by: receiving the digital image that wascreated by the scanning device and that includes the security mark,applying an OCR process to the digital image to attempt to recognize theplurality of characters in the security mark, identifying which of theplurality of characters in the security mark are recognized via the OCRprocess at least a number of times that exceeds a recognition threshold,saving the plurality of characters that are recognized via the OCRprocess at least a threshold number of times as a character subset foran encoding; and by a processing device, executing programminginstructions to generate an encoding by: determining how many charactersare in the character subset, determining how many font characters arerequired to print the microtext font, generating an encoding comprisinga representation of each of the font characters by an encoded characterstring that consists of one or more of the characters that are in thecharacter subset, and saving the encoding to a memory device.
 2. Themethod of claim 1 further comprising, by the image processing server,scaling the digital image up to a resolution of the OCR engine beforeapplying the OCR process to the digital image.
 3. The method of claim 1,further comprising, by a processor: receiving a command to print a newmicrotext security mark on a new document, identifying each characterthat is to be printed in the new microtext security mark; for eachidentified character that is to be printed, mapping the identifiedcharacter to an encoded character string in the encoding that representsthe identified character; and causing a print device to print the newdocument with identified character in the new microtext security markreplaced by its encoded character string.
 4. The method of claim 1,further comprising, by the image processing server: causing the scanningdevice to scan a new microtext security mark that is printed on a newdocument; receiving an indication that the new microtext security markcorresponds to the encoding; using the OCR engine to identify theencoded character strings from the encoding that are in the newmicrotext security mark; accessing the encoding, and converting each ofthe identified encoded character strings in the new microtext securitymark to a corresponding font character as represented in the encoding;and saving, to a memory, a document file in which the identified encodedcharacter strings in the new microtext security mark are replaced withtheir corresponding font characters.
 5. The method of claim 4 furthercomprising, by a print device or a display device, printing ordisplaying a document comprising the new microtext security mark withcorresponding font characters that were identified in the convertingstep.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein: the font comprises a256-character ASCII font; and each of the encoded character stringscomprises a string of 4 characters, a string of 8 characters, or astring of 16 characters.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein therecognition threshold comprises: a percentage that has a value of atleast 50%; or a requirement that a character be recognized at a levelthat is greater than that of other characters.
 8. A system forgenerating an encoding for printing secure information on a document,the system comprising: an image processing server comprising aprocessing device and a non-transitory computer-readable mediumcontaining programming instructions that are configured to cause theimage processing server to: receive, from a scanning device, a digitalscanned image of a security mark that is printed on a substratecomprising a plurality of characters in a microtext font, wherein: eachof the plurality characters appears more than one time in the securitymark, and the microtext font comprises a plurality of font characters,apply an OCR process to the digital scanned image to attempt torecognize the plurality of characters in the security mark; identifywhich of the plurality of characters in the security mark are recognizedvia the OCR process at least a number of times that exceeds arecognition threshold; allocate the plurality of characters that arerecognized via the OCR process at least a threshold number of times to acharacter subset for an encoding; generate an encoding comprising arepresentation of each of the font characters in the microtext font asan encoded character string that consists of one or more of thecharacters that are in the character subset; and save the encoding to amemory device.
 9. The system of claim 8, further comprising additionalprogramming instructions that are configured to cause the imageprocessing server to scale the digital scanned image up to a resolutionof an OCR engine that implements the OCR process before applying the OCRprocess to the digital scanned image.
 10. The method of claim 8, furthercomprising: a print device; and additional programming instructions thatare configured to cause a processor to: receive a command to print a newmicrotext security mark on a new document, identify each character thatis to be printed in the new microtext security mark, for each identifiedcharacter that is to be printed in the new microtext security mark, mapthe identified character to an encoded character string in the encodingthat represents the identified character, and cause the print device toprint the new document with identified character in the new microtextsecurity mark replaced by its encoded character string.
 11. The systemof claim 8, further comprising: the scanning device; and additionalprogramming instructions that are configured to cause the scanningdevice to create the digital scanned image of the security mark byscanning at least a portion of the substrate that contains the pluralityof characters in the microtext font.
 12. The system of claim 8, furthercomprising additional programming instructions that are configured tocause the image processing server to: receive a new digital scannedimage from the scanning device, wherein the new digital scanned imagecomprises a new microtext security mark that is printed on a newdocument; receive an indication that the new microtext security markcorresponds to the encoding; apply the OCR process to identify theencoded character strings from the encoding that are in the newmicrotext security mark; access the encoding, and convert each of theidentified encoded character strings in the new microtext security markto a corresponding font character as represented in the encoding; andsave, to a memory, a document file in which the identified encodedcharacter strings in the new microtext security mark are replaced withtheir corresponding font characters.
 13. The system of claim 12, furthercomprising: a print device; and programming instructions that areconfigured to cause the image processing server to instruct the printdevice to print a document comprising the new microtext security markwith corresponding font characters that were identified in theconverting step.
 14. A non-transitory computer-readable mediumcontaining programming instructions that are configured to generate anencoding for printing secure information on a document, the programminginstructions comprising instructions that are configured to cause animage processing server to: receive, from a scanning device, a digitalscanned image of a security mark that is printed on a substratecomprising a plurality of characters in a microtext font, wherein: eachof the plurality characters appears more than one time in the securitymark, and the microtext font comprises a plurality of font characters;apply an OCR process to the digital scanned image to attempt torecognize the plurality of characters in the security mark; identifywhich of the plurality of characters in the security mark are recognizedvia the OCR process at least a number of times that exceeds arecognition threshold; allocate the plurality of characters that arerecognized via the OCR process at least a threshold number of times to acharacter subset for an encoding; generate an encoding comprising arepresentation of each of the font characters in the microtext font asan encoded character string that consists of one or more of thecharacters that are in the character subset; and save the encoding to amemory device.
 15. The computer-readable medium of claim 14, furthercomprising additional programming instructions that are configured tocause the image processing server to scale the digital scanned image upto a resolution of an OCR engine that implements the OCR process beforeapplying the OCR process to the digital image.
 16. The computer-readablemedium of claim 14, further comprising additional programminginstructions that are configured to cause a processor to: receive acommand to print a new microtext security mark on a new document;identify each character that is to be printed in the new microtextsecurity mark; for each identified character that is to be printed, mapthe identified character to an encoded character string in the encodingthat represents the identified character; and cause a print device toprint the new document with identified character in the new microtextsecurity mark replaced by its encoded character string.
 17. Thecomputer-readable medium of claim 14, further comprising additionalprogramming instructions that are configured to cause the scanningdevice to create the digital scanned image of the security mark byscanning at least a portion of the substrate that contains the pluralityof characters in the microtext font.
 18. The computer-readable medium ofclaim 14, further comprising additional programming instructions thatare configured to cause the image processing server to: receive a newdigital scanned image from the scanning device, wherein the new digitalscanned image comprises a new microtext security mark that is printed ona new document; receive an indication that the new microtext securitymark corresponds to the encoding; apply the OCR process to identify theencoded character strings from the encoding that are in the newmicrotext security mark; access the encoding, and convert each of theidentified encoded character strings in the new microtext security markto a corresponding font character as represented in the encoding; andsave, to a memory, a document file in which the identified encodedcharacter strings in the new microtext security mark are replaced withtheir corresponding font characters.
 19. The computer-readable medium ofclaim 18, further comprising additional programming instructions thatare configured to cause a print device to print a document comprisingthe new microtext security mark with corresponding font characters thatwere identified in the converting step.
 20. The computer-readable mediumof claim 14, wherein: the font comprises a 256-character ASCII font; andeach of the encoded character strings comprises a string of 4characters, a string of 8 characters, or a string of 16 characters. 21.The computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein the recognitionthreshold comprises: a percentage that has a value of at least 50%; or arequirement that a character be recognized at a level that is greaterthan that of other characters.
 22. A non-transitory computer-readablemedium containing programming instructions that are configured to use anencoding to decode secure information that is printed on a document, theprogramming instructions comprising instructions that are configured tocause an image processing server to: receive, from a scanning device, adigital scanned image of a security mark that is printed on a substratecomprising a plurality of characters in a microtext font, wherein eachof the characters printed in the security mark is part of an encodedcharacter string that represents a full character set of the microtextfont, and wherein the plurality of characters included in the securitymark are a character subset of the full character set; receive anindication that the new microtext security mark corresponds to anencoding; apply an OCR process to identify the encoded character stringsthat are in the new microtext security mark; access a memory devicecontaining the encoding, and map each of the identified encodedcharacter strings in the microtext security mark to a corresponding fontcharacter in the full character set as represented in the encoding;convert each of the identified encoded character strings in themicrotext security mark to its corresponding font character in the fullcharacter set; and save, to a memory, a document file in which theidentified encoded character strings in the microtext security mark havebeen replaced with their corresponding font characters in the fullcharacter set.
 23. The computer-readable medium of claim 22, furthercomprising additional programming instructions that are configured tocause a print device to print a document comprising the microtextsecurity mark with corresponding font characters of the full characterset that were identified in the converting step.